Planting Better Pets

 

Babaoroody

 

Babaoroody has been called out of semi-retirement to assist TEAM PETS with 1) a new net of implants, and 2) to blitz for higher pets for each.  Their previous level 100 implants (which they got when they were in their 50s levels) have started looking puny ever since they got into their 90′s level range, however their treatment still needed to be increased before they could equip QL125 imps.  They targeted 125s because those are the highest level store bought basic imps available.  Imps over that level must be custom made by stripping down looted implants. Making custom imps is not something they can try until Babaemphee is around level 120 due to the high requirements.  After some calculations it was clear that Babaoroody’s Nano Programming (with an additional 92 points from an MP buff from Babaemphee) would only be high enough to make about half the implants.  Trader Tireen was employed to shop for and collect the needed basic implants and the clusters.  She handed these over to Babaoroody, who was able to build about half of them.  Baba then had to ask for help from end-game level guild mates to combine the remaining implants.  Over the course of several evenings, Angels of the Night toon Herschol combined the implants by taking advantage of a Nano Programming boost provided by guild’s player city.  The generous implant combiner gracefully let it pass that Baba had a few errors in implant preparations, however they were fairly minor and did not prevent the completion of the key implants and clusters.

Next came the actual implanting sessions with both Babaengy and Babaemphee going through that involved drill.  This drill involves a)swapping body, arms, leg, glove and boots armor for Omni med suit pieces, b) swapping regular head armor for a Biomech helmet (buffs treatment), c) hitting up a surgery clinic machine, and swapping the old imps out and putting the new imps in.  Then the first two steps have to be reversed.  While QL125 imps may not be considered ‘twink’ level for level 90 toons, they still provided just enough of a skill boost to get them to be able to control pets +20 levels above them self-buffed.  (Note: They still require Babaempee’s Masteries and trader Tireen’s Wrangle to cast the pets.)

With this out of the way, it was time for Baba to blitz a better bot for Babaengy (He had already given Babaemphee a better attack pet that he has had in his bank for quite some time.)  As the new Engy nano was level 146, it would be interesting to see how difficult the mission would be.  This usually depends on the type of mob.  The most dreaded mobs for him now are Slayerdroid types.  A one on one with these can often be fatal given the slightest error or bit of bad luck.  This mission turned out to be packed with Slayerdroids, but fortune smiled and none of them were placed squarely in the path to the mission objective.  He did have to kill a few Infector types but these are manageable.

COH-Empty first section, must be a team ahead, click for larger view

Once Babaemphee and Babaengy had equipped their new imps and their new pets, it was time to return to the ‘kill 3 of’ mission that was running for them both at COH.  Tireen was able to log off right away, as they did not need her help opening the front door.  Someone else must have fairly recently opened it, as they strolled right in.  The found the Blorrg and Skincrawler areas completely empty.  This meant there is most likely a good team just ahead of them.  They caught up with the other ‘team’ at the pool area where the entrance to the serpent tunnels is.  It was another ‘pet team’ this one consisting of a 85 crat with droid, and 110 Engineer with Slayerdroid II.  Despite the Slayerdroid firepower, they were not moving very quickly through the tunnel, so TEAM PETS passed them and proceeded to the southern tunnel section to complete their kill 3 serpents objective.  It actually worked out to both teams favor in the Kizzermole tunnel, as it was fully populated, and having two teams prevented anyone from being swarmed.  The other team then went to pull the switch to spawn the Pit Demon.  TEAM PETS had been looking at their time displays and decided that responsibilities in RL4 were pressing so after the other team vacated the switch room to go and kill the Pit Demon, they moved next to the switch and logged off.  A review of the combat logs later showed the new Flawed Warbot critting for 1100 points and averaging 700 point regular hits.  The new attack pet was hitting for around 675 points.  It was also clear that the additional evades from the imps was resulting in more log entries of the ‘Kizzermole tried to hit you but missed’ type.

Babaente Starts Kiting Again

 

Overlooking Claw Camp in SW Pleasant Meadows

 

The last time NT Babaente was out kiting was quite some time ago, before TEAM PETS started.  Her last kite had been at South West Claw Camp in Pleasant Meadows.  At that time, kiting there was a very dangerous proposition.  Her net run speed, self buffed with a hacked boosted graft Playful Cub morph, and the Boots of Infinite Speed, was just barely enough to allow her to outrun the Claws there, but just barely.  There was very little margin for error, such as forgetting to right click the boots to activate the ‘Terrain Knowledge’ +40 run speed buff.  The boots themselves only give a +3 boost to run speed when equipped.  The +40 run speed buff only lasts 30 minutes, but can be re-cast as needed.

She returned recently determined to see what a difference a whole additional 100 runspeed from her new Ring of Haste would make.  After scouting the area from her yalm she determined that some one had previously trained off the three Slayerdriods that usually guard this camp.

She only pulled a few Claws on her first kite, and it’s a good thing she did.  Early into the kite, she experienced some control issues that resulted in her momentarily getting stuck and the kite piling up on her.  She managed to get away, but with about 10% health, which caused the rest of the kite to take a long time as she had to be extra cautious since here run speed was reduced due to the low health.  After she sorted out the control issues, the next kite went really well.  At full health, and with the added runspeed from the Ring, she was easily able to pull the entire camp and lead it about with impunity.  This was the first time, self buffed, that she had enjoyed this surplus of speed.  By having more than enough speed, she could easily keep her distance when needed, and had greater flexibility in manipulating the kite to keep it together.  With the extra margin, she could take her time, tabbing through the mobs to find the strongest to use as the primary area of effect nuke target.

This large kite was more than enough to push her to ding level 90 as when she started she already had about 75% of a level built up.  The loot was nothing remarkable,  but she dutifully picked it up and tossed it into backpacks.  She ran a few more kites and then retired to the top of the little hill overlooking the camp to allocate out her new IP.  Besides pumping up her MC for better nukes, she is currently trying to build up her SI so she can equip her next best calm. While her calms are not as reliable as trader Tireen’s they come in very handy in dungeons and missions where kiting is not an option.

Solo NT kiting was a nice change of pace for the complexity of TEAM PETS.  It is quite the opposite kind of experience.  The NT only needs to cast a handful of self buffs, and then it mostly run, stop, nuke, run, etc.  It is very easy to get into action, get a decent amount of experience and then log out in under 50 minutes.  In the time it takes TEAM PETS to simply buff up, cast pets, and buff pets, NT Babaente can complete several kites.

Now that she is confident in the nice speed margin given by her new ring, she will invite trader Tireen to team up and leech experience.  While the Claws still give decent experience, it won’t be long before it will be time to start scouting out a higher level kiting spot.

Off to the Skys of Ruby-Ka

Running, running, always running between missions.

Babaengy and Babaemphee have been working away at a steady pace on their team missions bringing them to level 48.  One of their prime objectives has been to roll loot only nanos for their professions.  Babaemphee has had the best luck recently as she added a Greater Deranged Mindreaver, and 4 of her masteries nanos.  Some of each toons skills are starting to be capped, which frees up IP somewhat for secondary skills.  In Babaemphee’s case, this has allowed her to up her MM, PM and SI.  This helped her be able to cast the new masteries nanos, which in turn allowed both herself and Babaengy to cast higher pets and nanos.

Babaemphee shows off her new Vital Buckler, click for larger view.

The diminutive MP also acquired as mission loot an MP only weapon, (The Crotalus) and a MP only shield (The Vital Buckler).  The Crotalus has a rather ominous reading description that new MP’s should pay heed to.  Babaemphee’s tip, do not attempt casting the Crotalus unless your toon is 1) at max health, and 2) in a safe environment, (i.e. not likely to be attacked), and 3) ready with a heal pet with orders to heal you.  When one casts this nano, you lose 98% of your health.  The Buckler provides 72 all ACs and +150 health.

Team pets is slowly evolving their Boss Room strategies to include more use of the Mezz pet for crowd control.  Babaemphee first orders the heal pet on her before jumping in first.  Once in the room, she first tries to run to a spot that is away from the elevator, and hopefully can isolate one or more of the mobs.  This also helps to hopefully put some space between the mobs, so it is easier to identify and target them individually.  If there are three or more mobs, she orders the mezz pet on to the weakest mob, and the attack pet onto the strongest.  She keeps the heal pet on herself for the time being and she also attacks the strongest mob.

Bosses are getting bigger and tougher, click for larger view.

Then it is time for the Engineer to enter.  He jumps in and sets his attack bot on the same mob Babaemphee’s attack pet is on.  He makes note of the MP’s health and stims her if needed.  The MP monitors the health of all and switches the heal pet to any team member that needs it, including her attack pet.  She also is ready to health stim her self or the Engineer when needed.

This method works fairly well, but the first few seconds are the most crucial.  The longer it takes to sort out the individual targets and categorize them, the more damage the team takes before starting to fight back. Sometimes if the room is very small and there are multiple mobs, and they will all be on top of the elevator.  This makes it very hard to select and differentiate them.

Babaemphee only recently started setting her mezz pet on the weakest mob, but has found this to work really well when the pet is strong enough to effectively control the mob.

You know all we need is a couple of QL 90ish Nav Air eye implants and a pair of low quality Yalms, and we could say bye bye to this running business.

Babaoroody wanted to help this new team out, so he posted a question for them on the AOFroobs board.  So far they had not been able to find documentation of the duration of MP and Engy pets.  They did find some very old posts that indicated that the pets had really short durations under a half hour.   Babaemphee knew this was not the case, as both she and Babaengy had kept pets over an hour.  The AOFroobs replies indicated that MP and Engy pets have a max duration of 2 hours.  Since both Babaemphee and Babaengy rarely are logged on for more than 2 hours, they have not run into this limitation.

Running to missions on foot is starting to get really old for the pet team.  It adds a great deal of extra time, limits where they can accept missions, and often results in canceled missions when the way is blocked by multiple red mobs.

That has to be the longest hall Babaengy has seen in missions.

Between missions, the toons have been making it a habit to check the shop terminals for low quality Yalmahas.  Babaengy hit pay dirt first with a QL35 Yalm he found in the trader shop in Newland City.  He had to call in both Tireen and Babaente for help with credits which enabled him to walk out with a shiny new Yalm.  He still needed a small set of air navigation buffing implants in order to be able to equip it.

Babemphee lucked out Saturday evening, when Tireen was hitting the shopping rounds in Old Athens looking for a set of better looking Energized armor sleeves for Babaengy.  Tireen knew something was up when there were several other toons parked beside the vending machine.  As soon as she opened the shop window and saw the QL 30 Yalm, she called Babaemphee, who quickly made the few whompa hops from Newland to OA.  After both Tireen and Babaente lent credits to Babaemphee, she  bought the Yalm, and now is in the market for a set of air navigation buffing implants.

With their Yalmahas successfully equipped, our pair take a break before rolling up some missions.

This will allow them to no longer have to turn down some missions because those mission entrances are guarded by high level mobs.  The Yalms solve this problem in two ways.  One is that the superior speed of the Yalm can be used to train the mobs a safe distance away from the entrance.  The other way is that it allows them to fly quickly right into the mission entrance, usually to fast for any mobs around to react to.

Babaoroody logged on for a few minutes on Sunday to assemble the two Eye implants.  It turns out a single QL 80-90ish eye implant with a shining Navigate Air cluster and a Time and Space Cluster, was all that was needed (40+ Nav Air) to allow Babaengy and Babemphee to equip their new Yalms.

They also shared one other achievement over the last few days.  They both earned their Blossoms of Summer token boards, which gives a tasty 200 health and 150 nano, and a +1% experience increase.